


The Unusual Case of Matthew McCormick

by auberus, Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Category: Highlander: The Series, House M.D.
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Don’t copy to another site, GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19408498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auberus/pseuds/auberus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: Matthew McCormick regrets that House was there when he gets hit by a car. Rather a lot.





	The Unusual Case of Matthew McCormick

Crosswalks were supposed to be safe, Matthew thought vaguely. And why was he lying on his back? He tried to move, but pain tore through his back and leg, and he fell back, gasping. 

"Are you all right?" Concerned faces, bending over him. This was very, very bad. He could feel his Quickening already starting to work, repairing the damage wrought by two and a half tons of speeding automobile, and knew that he wouldn't get lucky enough to die. He was going to heal in front of all these people, he realized, with a panic that cut through the muzziness from the shock of his injuries, and there was nothing he could do about it.

House had been two steps behind the man when a car had clipped him, sending him twisintg and sprawling to the pavement. It had kept on going, and House had leaned against his cane a moment, the rest of the lunch-time crowd on the streets gathering around the fallen man. He watched a moment as the man tried to sit up, and grimaced, straightening, and using his cane to prod people out of his way.

"Move. I'm a doctor, give the man some space." House pushed aside a young woman who turned to glare at him. He gave her a bored look back. "I've had better glares from two year olds. Go, move, find someone else to practice your pout on."

He looked down at the man on the pavement, a small frown on his face. It wouldn't really be a good idea to try to crouch down to check him for injuries. "And someone call an ambulance," he added, looking up a moment with a scowl that would have his minions rolling their eyes and doing what he said, if one of them hadn't already anticipated him.

"No ambulance," Matthew said sharply, then coughed. He could taste the sharp tang of blood in his mouth, and swallowed it, trying to suppress a grimace. A doctor and a crowd were bad enough; an ambulance would get him plastered across the internet faster than he could say 'Jack Robinson'. There was a sudden, audible snap as his ribs re-set themselves, and Matthew coughed again, trying to cover it, while his eyes searched the faces around him, hoping that they'd missed it. 

"I'm just a little bruised," he continued, once he'd stopped coughing. "I'll be fine."

"And I'm a gentle, lovable old rascal," House snapped irritably, covering his curiousity a moment. He'd heard the snap - and he didn't think it was ribs breaking, though he could be mistaken. He leaned against his cane a moment, watching the man with sharp eyes. "I hope someone's dialing 9-1-1 right now, and getting an ambulance sent out. Imagine the guilt if the poor man dies if no one does anything to call help for him."

To Matthew's relief, the crowd started to disperse, the last few stragglers sped on their way by an intense blue glare. Unfortunately, their absence -- and the lack of their murmuring comments -- meant that the snap as his shin-bone reset was clearly audible.

"And that wasn't a bone breaking." House looked down at the man at his feet again, raising an eyebrow with an intent expression on his face. He wanted to know what the secret of the man at his feet was - and he wondered for a moment if it might not help with the constant pain he lived with. If he could solve the riddle of what it was that had the man healing as he watched.

"I told you; I'm just a little bruised," Matthew drawled, trying to get up again. There was still something wrong with his back, but he managed it. Looking himself over, he was glad to see that there was no blood anywhere. Clearly, the worst of his injuries had been internal. Another coughing fit seized him, and he spat reflexively, wincing when he realized that he'd coughed up old blood, clearing his now-healed lungs. He wasn't fond of dying, but right now he was fervently wishing that his wounds had been fatal.

House snorted, and shifted his weight to poke the man hard right above the knee, where the car had clipped him. "You were hit by a car going at least twenty-five miles an hour, and more likely faster. A broken leg, probably broken ribs, a punctured lung to judge by the blood you've coughed up - and probably swallowed some of it." He raised his eyebrows at the man, daring him to contradict his assessment.

"If that were so, I'd be flat on my back, choking on my own blood," Matthew said calmly -- but his heart was pounding. He realized too late that he'd forgotten to wince when poked, and wanted to swear. Better the crowd than this man. Those blue eyes were dangerously intelligent, and focused on him with a laser-like intensity. "Now, if you'll excuse me; I have things to do this afternoon." 

"You should be on your way to the hospital, with those plans scrapped, along with any plans for the next several days, at least." House leaned on his cane, watching the man, the lack of a reaction to being poked intriguing him as much as the knowledge of what it would be like to have a punctured lung. "Why aren't you?"

Not that he really expected the truth, not yet. It would be too easy, and not nearly as much fun as digging into the man's past and present to find out what little trick he had. House wondered for a moment how much he could drive his minions insane with this as a case. It would be entertaining to watch.

"Because I wasn't as badly injured as you seem to think I was." Matthew gave the man a challenging look and went on the offensive, hoping to distract his interrogator. "Are you sure you're a doctor, and not a bum with delusions of grandeur? I can't imagine that a physician of any skill would bungle a diagnosis so very badly."

A smirk spread across House's face. "I didn't." There was no doubt in his mind he was right, and he was going to find out what had happened. And that the man was going to provide him a challenge made it even better.

"Where did you say you worked?" Matthew countered. "That way, if I'm ever actually injured, I can avoid it." Stepping around the man, he started down the street, taking care to favour his right leg as he went.

House watched the man walk off, a thoughtful expression on his face. This would be a fascinating case to present to his minions. And he could use an excuse to stay out of the clinic. He looked down at the pavement, a smirk spreading across his face before he hobbled over to the table of a cafe, snagging some napkins to wipe up the blood on the pavement. And he already had one piece of the puzzle.

* * *

Dropping the wad of napkins on the table as he stalked into the conference room, House cheerfully grabbed a marker to start writing on the white board. "New case, boys and girls. What makes a man heal from broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a broken leg, get up and walk away with no sign of injury in under five minutes?"

"You being delusional?" Foreman didn't even look up from whatever he was reading, a cynical expression on his face.

"You decided to jerk us around?" Chase suggested, lifting an eyebrow. Eventually House would decide that he'd had his fun and get down to actual work, but it looked like today was going to be one of those days where that took a while.

Cameron just shook her head. "That's impossible, and you know it."

�"Should be." House turned to look at them, a calculating expression on his face. "You're going to prove it's not." And he could claim the credit later, when he put it all together.

"Really?" Foreman raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Cameron's right, it's impossible. Why don't we have a real case?"

"Because there isn't one at the moment, probably," Chase said. "He's just trying to make us jump through hoops."

"It'll be good practice," Cameron said. Chase rolled his eyes.

"Tell me what comes back on genetic tests on that blood sample in those napkins." House limped towards his office, intent on looking up people on the internet, and seeing if he couldn't find someone who matched the man who'd gotten up and walked away from what should have been a life-threatening car accident.

Foreman stared after House a moment before reaching out to pike gingerly at the wad with his pen. "Ten to one says it's not even human blood," he said as he stared a the red stains that were starting to darken to brown.

"I hope it's not," Chase said, curling his lip in distaste. "He gets weirder every day, but carrying human blood around in a napkin?" He shook his head. "Who gets to be the lucky one to actually run the tests?"

"I'm not doing it." Foreman shook his head. He'd rather be down doing House's clinic hours than play along with whatever sick game he was playing this time. "I still have clinic hours to do this week."

"Me neither," Cameron said. "I'm in the same boat that Foreman is."

Chase rolled his eyes. At least doing House's ridiculous lab-work would give him something to do besides deal with the dregs of humanity which infested the clinic. "Fine. Looks like I'm it." He looked at the napkins on the table with distaste. "As soon as I get a pair of gloves."

* * *

House looked up from a still-fruitless effort for searching for the strange man after making Chase wait for a long moment. "If you don't have something interesting in the test results, go away until you find some."

"There are some genetic anomalies," Chase said. After Foreman's comment, he'd been surprised to find that the blood was indeed human. "They're minor, and not enough to cause any problems." He handed the sheaf of results to House. "Other than that, there's nothing to find."

Snorting, House took the offered results, scanning them himself. "I didn't say we were looking for something that caused a problem." The 'you idiot' was implied instead of explicitly stated, for once.

"No. Instead you implied that we were looking for something that could cause a man to recover almost instantaneously from life-threatening injuries," Chase said dryly. "I didn't see anything that could have caused that, either."

"Find out what the genetic anomalies that he has do, then." House dropped the folder on his desk, picking up his ball, tossing it into the air. "And tell Foreman and Cameron they can take my clinic hours too, since they'd rather be there than working on this."

"I already asked Dr. [PPTH's geneticist]," Chase said, picking the abused file back up. "He said they didn't do anything. That it was the genetic equivalent of a second appendix."

House didn't believe that for a minute, and he rolled his eyes. "Find out what else is in the sample, and do a test on the mitochondrial DNA." He wasn't giving up on this.

He waited until Chase left to get up, and head downstairs with the intent of bothering Cuddy. Only to spot a familiar figure in the clinic, heading into one of the rooms, escorting someone he didn't see. Now this had the potential to be more entertaining than annoying Cuddy.

With a smug smirk on his face, he headed for the clinic room the man had stepped into, breezily plucking the file from the hands of the young doctor about to step in there. "I'll take this one." Even if it would get others talking, and make his minions wonder if he'd taken anything today besides his Vicodin.

Matthew scowled at the prisoner, who'd decided that ramming his head through the window of the patrol car would be an excellent way to effect his escape. Now the idiot needed stitches, and to be monitored for concussion.

"If you even think about moving," he started, only to be cut off by the door banging open. The all too familiar figure standing in the doorway made him groan. He really should have just stayed in bed.

"Hello, and how are we today?" House injected a note of sardonic cheer into his tone as he shut the door behind him. "No broken bones or coughing up blood still?" He directed that at the man he recognized, almost ignoring the other.

"I'm sorry?" Matthew said, and was spared from having to say more by the prisoner. 

"Doc," the man whined, "I gotta real bad headache."

"He put it through the back window of a patrol car," Matthew said dryly. "Apparently, Mr. Kincaid decided that he didn't want to accept our offer of hospitality." He looked sharply at Kincaid. "Grab this doctor, Kincaid, and you'll fall down every flight of stairs between here and booking."

House looked over at the man sitting on the exam table with no trace of anything resembling bedside manner. "Too bad you didn't do the job properly." He limped over to the counter on one side, washing his hands before pulling on a pair of gloves and getting out what he needed to patch the man up.

A case of terminally stupid walking in with someone interesting. Someone interesting who was with the police, and not a regular officer. That would make searching out who he was easier. And then he could sic his minions on his history.

"Detective Ryan, did you hear that?" Kincaid protested. "Are you gonna let him talk to me like that?"

"He's a taxpayer, Mr. Kincaid. Since he's going to be paying for your room and board for the next twenty-five years, that's only fair."

"Nothing is fair," House retorted, even though the comment hadn't been directed at him. He started cleaning out the wounds with a brisk and ruthless efficiency before starting to stitch him up. "Otherwise I wouldn't be surrounded by ugly idiots and the terminally stupid most of the time."

Matthew couldn't quite repress a smirk. The doctor's sense of humour reminded him of Methos at his most acerbic, as did his non-sufferance of fools and foolishness.

"Poor thing," he said, taking a break from his sharp-eyed watch over the prisoner to glance appreciatively at the doctor, who was neither ugly nor stupid. "You deserve better, I'm sure."

House gave him a mock-suffering look, sardonic amusement in his eyes. "I've resigned myself to a life of torment and solitary nights." He shrugged, careful not to disturb the neat stitches he was making. Just because the man was an idiot didn't mean House was going to let someone call his work sloppy later. "You can bring dinner tonight, and make it less boring."

"I'm flattered that you'd think I might liven up your evening," Matthew said dryly. "Is there anything in particular that you'd like me to bring?" Until he said it, he hadn't known that he was going to accept the invitation -- but then, the doctor intrigued him despite the danger the man represented, and he had no desire to take the words back. "And may I assume that you have an office, or will we be eating on one of the exam tables?"

Smirking, House looked up. "Head of Diagnostic Medicine, second floor. Bring something interesting." He finished the stitches, snipping the thread before cleaning up after himself. There were times when it was more entertaining making Cuddy and Wilson and his minions wonder if he'd lost his mind by doing things properly. Not often, but it happened.

"If you tell me your name, I'll even promise to bring dessert." Matthew looked over the row of stitches on Kincaid's forehead. They were as neat as any he'd ever seen, and in eight centuries of soldiering and police work, he'd seen a good many. "Not surgery? You've a neat hand."

"There's no challenge in surgery." House made a face as he picked his cane up again, leaning against it. "Doctor House." He grabbed the file as he opened the door again, opening it as he headed for the nurse's station, rapidly filling in the notes he thought necessary. "The nurse will give you the paperwork you need to fill out, Detective Ryan."

He wasn't about to stay in the clinic longer than he had to now that he'd secured a chance to grill the man more about his healing trick, and dealt with the idiot he was escorting. No way was he letting Cuddy make him stay for more clinic hours.

* * *

Matthew hadn't been entirely sure what House would consider 'interesting' as far as cuisine went, but eventually made his choice, and spent an hour cooking dinner and listening to NPR. He boxed it up and changed into some of the clothes he'd bought for Special Agent McCormick -- designer jeans and a black cashmere sweater, with a white t-shirt underneath. Detective Ryan didn't spend money on clothes, but Matthew enjoyed dressing well, and he was glad of an excuse to do so.

He found House's office easily enough. The door was open, but he knocked anyway, sticking his head in to see if the office's occupant were present.

House had been poking around the internet for information about Detective Ryan - Matthew, according to what he'd found so far - and been rather intrigued by the relative lack of information.

"Did you stay at home a lot as a kid?" he asked without bothering to look up to see if the person who'd knocked was his expected guest. "Or just on days when they took school pictures?"

"I'm not a fan of having my picture taken," Matthew said, coming in and putting the basket of food down on the desk. "I hope Cuban is interesting enough for you." This was going to be interesting. House was unpleasantly sharp. The lack of school pictures had gone unnoticed even by the FBI.

"Never had it." House turned away from his computer, leaning back in his chair. "Hard to get out of having your picture taken at some point."

"True enough," Matthew admitted, pulling containers out of the basket, along with plates and silverware, and a six-pack of Dos Equis. "Can't get Cuban beer in the States, more's the pity," he said. "Mexican's not really the same, but it's the closest." He looked up at House. "You're not a vegetarian, are you?"

House wrinkled his nose. "I'm not stupid." It was the same thing, in his head. He reached for one of the beers, watching Matthew with an intent gaze. Still working at the puzzle, like a dog with a bone. "How did you walk away from that little encounter with the car without showing even scratches by the end of the day?"

"You don't know that I'm not bruised," Matthew countered. "Here. This is ropa vieja, with black beans, yellow rice, plantains and fried yuca." He handed House a laden plate, then served himself and sat down.

"You had more than bruises when you were on the ground," House countered, accepting the plate, but not letting himself be distracted by the description of the food. He took a taste, and made a mental note that whatever secret Matthew was hiding, he at least made - or bought - food that was worth getting his hands on. "No matter how often you say otherwise."

Matthew narrowed his eyes. "I'm really not sure why you're so convinced that I was seriously hurt. It's pretty unbelievable."

"I was behind you when you were hit." House wasn't intimidated by the expression on Matthew's face, watching him as he chewed on another bite of the food. "You could not have come out of that with only bruises." He paused, taking another bite. "And I know what the sound of bones being re-aligned is."

"I thought you were a diagnostician. Aren't broken bones more the sort of thing that an ER doctor would handle?" Matthew took a bite, then nodded in satisfaction. The food had turned out well. It had been nearly thirty years since he'd tried his hand at Cuban cuisine. It was good to know he hadn't lost his touch.

"I did a rotation in ER as a resident." Years ago, but some things just weren't forgotten.

"That must have been interesting," Matthew said. "Or not, given your views on the general run of humanity." He leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. "Why become a doctor, with such a strong streak of misanthropy?"

"Why miss out on all the misery of humanity?" House gave him a sardonic grin. He didn't do this for the people who he ended up saving - he did it for the puzzle, and for his own entertainment. "They may be idiots, but sometimes they're idiots with interesting things wrong with them."

"You remind me of a friend of mine," Matthew said, smiling. Though Methos wasn't usually quite as acidic. "He's a doctor too, coincidentally." Or he had been, in the thirties. God only knew what the old reprobate was doing now. "Are you from New Jersey, then, or are you a transplant?"

"From a lot of places." House shrugged. "Traveled a lot." He eyed Matthew a moment. "What about you?"

"England, originally," Matthew drawled, "and then the Southern United States." He smiled ruefully. "You're not the only one who's traveled a good deal."

Gesturing towards the food with his chin, he asked, "Well? Is the meal interesting enough?"

"Tell me about this friend of yours." House ignored Matthew's change of subject, and latched onto an earlier tidbit from the conversation. The food was interesting enough, but poking and prodding at the puzzle that was sitting across from him was more interesting, and entertaining.

"Adam?" Matthew asked. "I think you'd like him. He's a doctor, and an expert in ancient languages. Very bright; little tolerance of fools." He took a long swallow of beer. "He's another one who could flay an elephant at fifty paces with his tongue."

"Does he have your same talent for getting back up when he shouldn't be able to?" House raised an eyebrow, a small smirk playing on his face. He didn't expect an honest answer, but he wasn't passing up a chance to bait Matthew more on that subject.

Matthew narrowed his eyes. "You're not going to let that go, are you?"

"Nope!" House leaned back in his chair, taking another large bite of the food. "It's an interesting puzzle, and you keep lying about it."

Matthew sighed. It was becoming increasingly apparent that distraction wouldn't work. There were a good many Immortals who would have killed House by now, for the danger he presented, but Matthew had never been able to make himself kill a mortal just to preserve his secret. He could keep lying, and hope that House gave up in frustration -- but something told him that wouldn't work either. The other option was the truth. Told in the right way, it was entirely unbelievable -- Matthew hadn't believed it himself at first, and he'd heard it less than half an hour after a lance through the heart had caused his first death. He tilted his head to the side, looking intently at House. "Can you keep a secret?"

"If it's worth keeping." House shrugged. He hadn't kept all secrets he'd been told, but some of them hadn't needed keeping - though he was aware his criteria for what was worth not telling was different from most people around him.

"And what's your position on human experimentation?" Matthew asked. "Involuntary human experimentation," he corrected.

House's lips twitched up in a smirk. "My minions would tell you I do that to a lot of my patients." Not what he called it, but there were times when they were convinced he was. "I'd prefer to call it novel medical treatments."

"Good to know," Matthew said blandly. "You understand, I feel a certain reluctance to risk ending up strapped to a table in a lab somewhere."

"Wouldn't do that. Doesn't give me a real chance to figure you out." Environment was part of what made the puzzle, anyway, and a lab just wasn't where he wanted his puzzles.

"In that case," Matthew shrugged, "I'm Immortal." He smiled slyly. "Bullets, knives, speeding cars -- all temporary inconveniences, assuming an absence of curious spectators. I don't age, and I can't die."

"How old are you, then?" House wasn't sure he believed this latest bit, but he wasn't going to call Matthew a liar again. Not yet. Though it did give him more to go looking for - like a picture to match the face he was watching in public records as far back as possible.

"Coming up on my eight hundredth birthday," Matthew admitted. The disbelief he'd been hoping for was nowhere to be seen. "I stopped counting in years sometime in the seventeenth century."

House tilted his head to one side. "Met anyone interesting?"

"By that, I'm assuming you mean famous," Matthew said dryly. He couldn't tell whether House believed him or not, and it was making him a little nervous. "I fought for Edward of Woodstock until I took an arrow during the Najera campaign. I could sit here and list names all evening, but they'd mostly belong to military men and famous killers." He smiled. "I've spent most of my life in one army or another, or in law enforcement during peacetime."

Another piece of the puzzle to narrow down where to look. Assuming the man wasn't just insane and happened to have a phenomenal ability to heal, which was always possible. If unlikely.

"Sounds fun." Not really, but sarcasm was easy. "Explains the lack of school pictures, though."

"It does at that," Matthew said ruefully. "The advent of computers has made changing identities notably more difficult." He shrugged. "As for my choice of career...I was born a lord's eldest son, and inherited his lands and title before my own first death. You might say that responsibility was bred into my bones." It was becoming increasingly evident that House believed him, or had at least suspended disbelief. "I don't suppose I need to re-emphasize how important it is to keep this to yourself," he said, letting a hint of steel creep into his eyes and voice. "I meant what I said about not wanting to end up strapped to a government lab table."

House shrugged. "My minions already heard about the accident with the car. Can't give up the puzzle or they'll start digging themselves." He smirked as he took another bite of his food, watching Matthew's reaction to that little tidbit of information. He woudn't tell anyone else, but his minions would think it was strange if he dropped a puzzle without telling them the solution.

"Make something up," Matthew said flatly. He'd been with the British Expeditionary Force when Bergen-Belsen had been liberated, and had seen first-hand the sort of horrors that mortals were capable of inflicting in the name of scientific discovery. He'd had to kill two of the five Immortals who'd been in the camp. Only one of the other three had lasted more than a decade after liberation. "Immortality's not the sort of thing you people believe in these days; not unless the proof is right in front of you. The modern age has its upsides."

"And if I don't?" House was pushing now. He would find something to tell his minions, something suitably entertaining, but not yet. He wanted to make them work for the solution a bit longer.

Matthew let the last of the good humour drain from his face; let House get a glimpse of what murderers saw when he came for them at last. "Do you have any idea what the average mortal would do for Immortality? I pulled five of my kind out of a concentration camp at the end of the Second World War, and that sort of greed for eternal life isn't limited to the sort of man who would follow a swastika. I will not let that happen again; that or anything like it." 

House leaned forward in his chair again, setting his plate down. "I don't want immortality." And he wasn't stupid enough to actually tell his minions that the guy was immortal. That there had to be something in his genetics that let him heal that fast, or something classified that he hadn't weaseled out of Matthew - well, he wouldn't have any qualms telling them that.

"Since it can't be transmitted, I'd say that's a good thing," Matthew said dryly. "But what about your...minions? Or whoever they tell?" He shook his head. "The sorts of things that science lets men do to one another is almost enough to make me nostalgic for the times when the worst we had to fear in case of discovery was burning at the stake. I'm not...entirely human, and that's the sort of thing that lets otherwise ethical men decide that exploitation is perfectly acceptable."

"Genetic tests say otherwise." House gave Matthew a sardonic, momentary grin. "And my minions aren't likely to tell anyone anything other than that their boss is being unreasonable and demented again. And possibly delusional." Mostly demented, though, he was sure.

Matthew leaned forward, interested despite himself. "You ran genetic tests? What did the results say?" To his knowledge, no one had ever run genetic tests on an Immortal, and knowing what to expect if one were run on him in the future could be a serious asset.

"That you're a normal human being with nothing particularly special beyond some junk DNA." House shrugged, watching Matthew. "I told my minions to check the mitochondrial DNA for something interesting." Along with anything else that could be considered abnormal, but he didn't think he'd have to mention that.

Matthew relaxed back into his chair, some of the tension sliding from his muscles. Nothing that couldn't be explained away, thank god. "What are you planning on telling your minions, then? Whatever it is, it can't go any further than your hospital. There are Immortals working in the medical field."

House shrugged. "Whatever seems interesting and plausible at the time." Since it didn't appear that any of this was going to be useful for him. Beyond an entertaining person to interrogate at irregular intervals about whatever topic crossed his mind. "Why so worried about this coming to the attention of others like you?"

Matthew looked at him for a long moment, trying to decide how much to tell. House already knew the bulk of the secret, but the Game was harder to explain than fast healing and an extended life span. At the same time, not telling him about it could put him in danger, if he decided to go poking around in the Immortal world.

"Most of us aren't what you'd call 'safe'," he said finally. "I make a real effort to avoid injuring mortals, but there are some of us who would kill you for curiosity with the same ease with which you'd swat a fly, and lose about as much sleep over it. And if they link me to your finding out, they'll come after me, too."

"If you can't die, why are you worried about them coming after you?" House leaned back in his chair, raising an eyebrow at Matthew. He'd more than half-expected the self-preservation, but he wasn't going to leave it be.

"I can be killed," Matthew admitted. "It's not easy to do, but it can be done -- and there are Immortals out there who would try to kill me in a heartbeat if they thought I'd betrayed us." There were others who would try to kill him for a lot less, but it wasn't necessary to mention that. "They'd definitely kill you if they thought you knew too much. A lot of Immortals have trouble remembering that mortal lives are important."

There was that bit about they'd kill him, and House didn't understand why Matthew would care. "And 'mortal' lives are important to you?" He gave him a cynical look, not so much because he didn't believe Matthew as it was for that lack of understanding. A bit like trying to understand why Wilson seemed to think House was his friend, not entirely a puzzle he was sure he wanted to solve, for once. Push to its limits, yes, but solve? He gave a mental shrug.

"All life is important," Matthew said, picking up his beer and pushing aside his plate. "I've spent most of mine in law enforcement, of one type or another, putting murderers away." He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. His choice of career was probably a response to having to commit murder himself in order to survive, but that wasn't really something that needed to be shared. There was an easier explanation. "It's partly a need to stay busy -- Immortal life can become a burden, if you let it -- and partly due to my upbringing -- but it's also because yes, mortal life does matter."

"A very enlightened view. Have you always felt that way, or is it something you picked up when the unwashed masses decided that maybe they didn't always need to fight and kill the infidel and heretic?"

"My teacher drilled it into my head pretty thoroughly," Matthew said dryly. "Any delusions of arrogance I might have had were very much destroyed by the time she let me go off on my own." The thought of Cierdwyn always made him smile. He'd been absolutely stunned the first time she knocked his sword out of his hand -- he'd been considered one of the best swordsmen in England, at the time -- but it had been a very effective lesson.

"Hmph." House wasn't sure what to say to that, not yet, but it was a piece of the puzzle, if nothing else. "How did you find out you were Immortal? Your parents tell you? Or did you find out when you failed to stay hurt as long as anyone else around you?"

"I took a lance through the heart in tourney," Matthew said. "When I opened my eyes and discovered that I was lying in state rather than gone to my eternal reward, I figured something strange had happened." He took a sip of beer before explaining further. "We're not born Immortal. Until the first time we're killed, we're just like everyone else. I've got some truly wicked scars from injuries I took during the first thirty-one years of my life. After that first death, though, we stop aging, and even death is only temporary. Most deaths," he amended.

"What sort wouldn't be temporary?" House watched Matthew shrewdly, the question another he didn't expect a straight answer to, if he got one at all. And at some point, he might ask to see those scars, just to know they were there, but not right now. They weren't as imporant as knowing what to look for to identify those like Matthew who might show up in the papers or the morgue.

"Well, I wouldn't want to lay a wager that I'd survive a direct hit by an artillery shell," Matthew drawled, "and stepping on a land mine might cause some permanent problems." He put down his beer and reached into the cooler for the apple pie he'd bought at the grocery store on his way to PPTH. "Here. I believe I promised dessert."

"And how would others like you try to kill you?" House didn't let dessert distract him, though he did take a slice of the pie when it was opened and cut. Because while he could see something explosive being lethal, it didn't give him a clue about why it would be lethal to Matthew.

"One on one," Matthew said. "It's a duel-to-the-death sort of thing." He helped himself to a slice of pie and returned to his seat. The pie itself was quite good; certainly better than anything he'd have been able to manage. He'd learned to cook, but he'd never been much of a hand at baking.

"With what? Swords?"

That was the first thing that sprang to mind for the way Matthew had worded it. And if he really was eight hundred years old, he wouldn't have grown up with guns available to fight with. House took a bite of the pie as he waited for Matthew's answer, watching him with a shrewd expression on his face.

Centuries of practice at preventing his face from giving him away are the only thing that saves Matthew from choking on his pie. 

"What gave you that idea?" he asks, and tries not to wince at the tone of his own voice.

House shrugged, taking another bite of pie with relish, a satisfied smirk on his face at the sharpness in Matthew's voice. "The way you answered the question." He paused, looking thoughtful a moment, even if there was still a trace of mockery and sardonic amusement underlying the expression. "And maybe that little incident up in Manhattan with some guy showing up with his head cut off... when was that?" he asked, though he already knew the answer, watching Matthew again for a reaction.

I'm going to strangle Connor a little bit the next time I see him. His younger cousin's more flamboyant, but Connor's the one whose newspaper headlines are still haunting him twenty years on.

"Some time in the eighties," Matthew says casually, capping off the words with another bite of apple pie. "I was all the way across the country at the time, but I heard about it later, at the Bureau." Throwing out a bit of his history is dangerous, but it might prove distracting.

"Someone you knew?" House asked, curious, and not as distracted as he suspected his guest might hope. He was interested in finding out who Matthew had been at the FBI - that being the 'Bureau' he assumed the other man was talking about - but he wanted to dig more at this kernal of information. "The victim or the murderer," he added with a shrug.

"I wouldn't exactly call him a victim," Matthew says dryly. The Kurgan had been a bloody menace, both in the Game and in the struggle to keep Immortals from exposure. Another swallow of beer alleviates the sting of having been out-maneuvered. "He richly deserved his ending."

House raised an eyebrow, but doesn't comment yet, reaching for his beer, and taking a swallow. He contemplates grabbing a vicodin from his pocket, but at the moment, he's wrapped enough in this puzzle that he doesn't feel as much a need to soothe the twinge in his leg.

"One of those Immortals who'd kill a mortal without regret?" He set the bottle of beer back down, taking another bite of the pie. "You didn't answer my earlier question," he added as a reminder.

"No, I didn't," Matthew says blandly. The combination of beer and pie is unusual, but not unwelcome. "And that particular idiot went a bit further than 'without regret'. He was a little on the obtrusive side, as well."

"Made it harder to hide?" House gave Matthew a bit of a smirk, before shrugging, not expecting or looking for an answer to that question. "That bring him to the attention of someone who didn't like having little mortals in on their little secret?"

"Most of us gave up running around with human trophies back in the Dark Ages," Matthew says dryly. "And can you really blame us for not wanting to announce our presence?" He shook his head. "Individually, you're usuallly fine. In large groups..." He trailed off, not wanting to follow his memories down that particular path.

"The world is full of stupid people, and people who become stupid when subjected to crowding." Of course, House was firmly of the opinion that most everyone around him was stupid, or at least not worth the trouble of solving.

"You don't need to tell me that," Matthew said, memories of domestic disturbances and public drunkenness calls crowding to the forefront of his mind. "I've spent more than enough Christmases on patrol."

"I doubt Immortals are any less prone to bouts of stupidity." House gave Matthew a look that dared him to contradict him. "No doubt some of them announced their presence, both past and present. There for someone to find, if they're looking for it."

"Investigating anyone with that much confidence would be a very bad idea," Matthew points out, hoping that House will take the hint. There are only a few Immortals who don't bother to hide. The younger MacLeod is by far the best of the bunch. The rest...well, until Melvin Koren's recent disappearance, Matthew would have considered him one of the easy ones to trace, and the idea of House asking Koren these questions was nauseating, largely because he could picture Koren's reaction. "But yes. Immortality doesn't confer wisdom by any stretch of the imagination."

"I'm not looking to get killed." House settled easily back into his seat, reaching into his pocket for his vicodin after all, popping one into his mouth to swallow dry. Rubbing his leg as he watched Matthew. Not entirely certain where he wanted to go with his questions at this point. Other than still being curious if he could find some way to harness that rapid healing to fix his leg.

"Then I'd suggest you don't go digging through records to find any more of us," Matthew says, lifting an eyebrow for emphasis. "Or trying to figure out which of your friends and acquaintances might be one of us." Not that he'd felt Presence at the hospital, but it was best to issue the warning in any case.

House snorted, sitting upright in his chair once more, setting his plate on his desk. "None of those that matter have shown your propensity to heal faster than they should." It was possible he'd come across one or another before, but never as one of his patients, or in any capacity that really mattered. He was sure he would have noticed.

"Interesting attitude for a physician to take," Matthew says. "I thought all humanity was supposed to matter." He couldn't resist adding, "We are pretty good at hiding it, you realize. You caught me off guard today; I'm not usually so clumsy."

"Humanity is full of useless people. They're not what makes a case interesting." He gave Matthew a long look, his expression making it clear that this was probably one of the few exceptions. And that he wasn't about to admit it. "You mean no one's ever been looking in the wrong place at the wrong time before?"

"Oh, it's happened more than once," Matthew admits, finishing off one beer and reaching for another. "Most of the time, though, some fast talking is all that's required to get out of it. Most humans aren't all that eager to believe the impossible."

"Most people aren't going to look past what they're told." House shook his head, dismissing the majority of humanity as not worth the breath it took to mention them. "It's not believing the impossible if it happened. A puzzle, improbable and with an answer no one is going to believe, but not impossible."

Matthew salutes that particular sentiment with a tip of his beer bottle. It's been a long time since he's had a conversation with anyone this sharp. The resemblance to Methos is stronger all the time. "As living proof that there are more things in heaven and earth, I'll echo that last. I've seen some pretty unbelievable things over the past eight centuries."

* * *

House smirked to himself as he spun his cane, waiting for the person he was calling to pick up. Something the other night about the name of Matthew's friend had niggled at the back of his mind, and he'd gone hunting through old photos and such while setting his minions looking for pictures of any physician currently working in the US with the first or last name Adam. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for until he'd gone through the list they'd compiled for him, grumbling the entire time.

Now he just had to get the history grad-student turned doctor into his office. A man who hadn't aged a day since that interesting evening spent away from whatever medical conference he had been attending at the time arguing philosophy in a blues bar. And then the trick would be getting Matthew here at the same time. It would be interesting to see the reaction, even if they didn't know each other.

"Hello?" Methos snagged the phone on the fly, jamming it into the space between his shoulder and his ear while he tried to salvage the remains of the dinner he'd forgotten about while reading the latest medical journals in an attempt to catch himself up.

"Doctor Adams?" House kept his voice professional and brisk, something he didn't often do, keeping the glee out of his voice at his plans when Adams picked up. "Doctor House, at Princeton-Plainsboro. I have a case here, and your name came up while taking her history. She claims you're her primary physician..." he trailed off, inbibing his words with a world of skepticism. As if he wasn't certain of the woman's credibility, though it could easily be interpreted as not having confidence in the abilities man on the other end of the phone.

Methos dumped the black and smoking pan into the sink, and turned the water on, stepping back from the clouds of smoke and steam that billowed up from the overheated remains of what would have been dinner. He had several patients with conditions that might well have flared up severely enough to require a hospital visit, but he hadn't thought that any of them would have gotten ill enough to require a phone call to him at nine thirty on a Sunday evening. House's name was familiar, though he couldn't quite decide why. Princeton-Plainsboro was well thought of -- maybe that was the reason?

"Oh?" The combination of his ruined dinner and the unexpected call put a slight bite in his voice, and he tried unsuccessfully to temper it. "You wouldn't happen to have a name, would you?"

House glanced over at the computer screen on the desk he was borrowing, picking one of the names that he'd winnowed through to find someone whose illness could have been a misdiagnosis of something more exotic. "Chart says Sonia Alexander."

"You haven't seen her?" Bloody wonderful. Sonia Alexander was a middle-aged hypochondriac with a particularly nasty case of lupus. She required a great deal of attention on ordinary days, and on her bad days, was likely to react badly to a disinterested doctor.

"That's what my minions are for." House shrugged, keeping the smirk off his face by sheer will. He could gloat later, while he was being entertained by his Immortal friend and the doctor he was talking to. "They're particularly good at holding the patient's hand and lying to them about their chances of dying in the next twenty hour hours."

"What?" Methos dropped the pan he'd been holding, then winced at the resultant clatter. "She has _lupus_, not Ebola. Give her some painkillers and tell her I'll be there in the morning. I guarantee her blood pressure will drop twenty points." Keeping the 'you idiot' unspoken is an effort, but he manages.

House smirked, reaching over to close the programs out on the computer, and shut it down. "I'll make sure my minions do that." If she'd actually been here, and his minions hadn't spent the weekend entertaining themselves outside the hospital, at least. "You'll want to find the Diagnostics Department when you show up. Second floor. Can't miss it."

He hung up the phone abruptly, shoving out of Cuddy's chair, and limping toward the door. Now he just had to get Matthew to show up, and he would have something more entertaining than his usual soaps to get him through Monday.

Methos swore furiously at the dead air at the other end of the line, and tossed the remains of the dishes into the sink. He would throw them away when he got home. Grabbing his coat, he slipped out the door. He'd finally placed Dr. House's name. The bastard was Princeton-Plainsboro's head of Diagnostic Medicine, not just some arrogant ER attending, and for him to be calling at such an hour boded no good for Mrs. Alexander's continued survival. With House involved, the bloody woman probably would turn out to have Ebola.

Fishing his cell phone out of his pocket, House dialed the number he'd dug up for Matthew, using his cane to stab the call button for the elevetor as he waited for the Immortal to pick up. He already knew what he'd use to get Matthew to come. The promise of dinner, conversation, and a desire to pick at the puzzle again. In what promised to be an interesting manner.

* * *

The nurse on duty at Princeton-Plainsboro's emergency room was no match for Methos in a snit. By the time she'd admitted that no Sonia Alexander had been admitted through the ER, she looked distinctly nervous. 

"Then where," Methos asked, trying to smooth the anger out of his voice, "is Dr. House?"

The relief in the poor woman's eyes almost made him feel guilty. Almost. 

"In his office. If she's a patient of his, she might not have come in through the emergency room." 

"And his office is...?" Methos asked. The directions he received in return were clear and concise, and he remembered to thank the woman before aiming his steps towards the elevator. He couldn't frighten House as badly as he wanted, but he could make sure that the idiot never pulled this sort of stunt again.

House leaned back in his chair, half-listening to Matthew answering his most recent question, and half-listening for the ping of the elevators in the relative quiet of the hospital on a Sunday night. He was fairly certain he'd irked this Adam enough to make him come tonight. It would be such a waste of hacking Cuddy's machine if this didn't work.

Well, perhaps not such a waste, since the conversation was always interesting with Matthew, but it would be a little more difficult to get him to come back in the morning if the call hadn't gotten the result he wanted.

"Some of us," Matthew answered, amused. A conversation with House was always more entertaining than almost anything else on offer. "Most of us are smart enough to avoid fame, at least in this age." He smirks, not quite able to resist, since Carl basically gave himself up anyway. "You might remember Carl Robinson. Or Byron, if you're more musicallly inclined." Carl was well-hidden, and Byron was dead, and sharing a few of the secrets he'd collected over the years would do no one any harm.

"The baseball player who murdered a fan, and a crazy English poet." House shrugged, sitting up enough to reach for another of the donuts he'd bought before setting up the evening's entertainment. Where was Adams, anyway? "Who became a depressingly ordinary drug-addicted rock star."

"Like I said, the smart ones don't go in for everlasting fame these days." Matthew reached for a donut, then froze, his hand halfway to the box as the feel of Presence trailed unpleasantly down his spine. 

"Expecting company?" he asked mildly.

House raised his eyebrows, looking at Matthew with surprise he didn't have to feign, and an undisguised interest. "Why? Is your spidey-sense tingling?" Another bit of information, at least if Adams walked in the door shortly. Interesting that Immortals could sense each other, and something he maybe should have asked about sooner. If he hadn't decided not to, just to see what would happen.

"Something like that," Matthew agreed, sliding his chair back from the desk so as to have the room to stand if it became necessary. No decent Immortal would fight on hospital grounds -- the Quickening could and would do all sorts of nasty things to the life-support equipment -- but then, no decent Immortal would threaten House, and that was Matthew's primary concern. He didn't quite trust the man not to have gone digging in places he shouldn't. "Been pestering anyone unusual lately?"

Methos felt the first hints of Presence as the elevator doors opened, and if he'd been less irate, if he'd been even a little less concerned about Mrs. Alexander, he'd have turned around and gone home. As it was, there was nothing to do but to hope that it was Dr. House he was sensing, and that said doctor knew better than to issue a challenge on hospital grounds. There were two men inside the lighted office, though, and Methos slid a hand into the pocket of his coat just in case it was a trap. A bullet was much easier to explain than a Quickening, and if he had to, he could just keep shooting. There was a reason he bothered with silencers.

"Nope," House lied breezily, leaning back in his chair as he caught a glimpse of movement in the hallway outside. He was right about the phone call being just the right combination of rude and worrying to get Adams' attention.

"Well, unless you count calling up general practitioners and getting them out of their beds on a Sunday night about patients who are probably still at home getting their beauty sleep," he continued with a mock-thoughtful expression. "I was sure I'd seen that guy before."

It was probably very fortunate for House that the unknown Immortal chose that moment to knock on the door. Restraining his temper with serious difficulty, Matthew gestured at House.

"It's your door," he said, not trusting himself to speak further.

House smirked, raising his voice to be heard through the glass. "You aren't going to make the cripple get up and open an unlocked door, are you?"

He leaned back in his chair with his donut, watching Adams with undisguised glee and amusement. He hadn't imagined the resemblence in the picture, and seeing the proof in the flesh was gratifying.

It was all Matthew could do not to wince as the door swung open. He'd seen Methos angry only once before, and the passage of years had helped him to forget just how frightening the man could be when he chose. He barely glanced at Matthew before turning his attention to House.

"You would be Dr. House." He sounded disgusted, and the look he sent Matthew wasn't much happier. The anger seemed to have dissipated slightly, though, which was a relief. "May I assume that you have my patient's charts ready for examination? And, while we're at it, my patient as well?"

"I'd assume your patient is at home." House gave him a mock-confused look, before reaching out his cane to hook a third chair closer. "Donut?" he offered, nudging the open box closer to the end of the desk.

Methos' next glance took in Matthew's sheepish expression, House's self-satisfied one, and the half-finished box of donuts with equal displeasure. Then he let out a breath and sprawled into the chair opposite Matthew.

"No, thank you," he said precisely.

Matthew tried not to wince. Methos fixed House with a penetrating stare.

"Medical conference. In London." He glanced at Matthew. "I'll discuss this with you later."

"Very good!" House took a large bite of his donut, and at least had the decency to swallow it before he added, "If he hadn't not died in front of me, I never would have made the connection." While waving the hand still holding the half-eaten donut at Matthew.

"Oh, really," Methos said, glancing at Salisbury, who was shifting in his seat and trying not to look guilty. "Shot by a suspect, were you?"

"Hit by a car." Salisbury sounds apologetic, and well he might. Methos does not like being ambushed, even when the ambusher is nothing more dangerous than a sharp-eyed mortal. 

"Even better," Methos says. "May I assume that you had nothing to do with this?" If he hadn't remembered that medical conference, he'd be making the opposite assumption, but he remembers House, remembers thinking that this was a mortal to avoid. The angry, embarrassed expression on Salisbury's face is answer enough.

House finished his donut while watching the two of them, letting Adam grill Matthew a moment. Something he wouldn't have hesitated to let happen to any of those he associated with, as they could all have told Matthew.

"I might have warned him, if I'd known about the spidey-sense thing." He shrugged unapologetically, the expression on his face the same intense curiosity when caught by a new puzzle.

"If you had, I'd have warned you in the strongest terms against it, and arranged to be elsewhere," Matthew said dryly. If he'd known that House would manage to dig Methos up, he'd have been in the next state. Methos wasn't the Kurgan; he was much more dangerous, if he chose to be.

"Noted," Methos said, and with that the worst of the tension slipped away. When Methos leaned back in the chair, a smirk playing about the corners of his mouth, Matthew knew he was out of immediate danger.

"Well. Congratulations, Dr. House. Do you mind if I ask what the point was behind this elaborate and dangerous charade?"

"I wouldn't have warned you until you were here," House pointed out, unrepentant. "You're both interesting. A puzzle."

Not just because they could heal very quickly, though that was part of the puzzle of them being Immortal. The puzzle inside a puzzle, and while he might have directed his minions on to other cases with the impression that they'd solved it - with the answer that House was demented and bored that week - he wasn't done with it. And not really because he thought he could use it to fix his leg; that reason hadn't crossed his mind in weeks.

"My god," Methos muttered, in the Latin that had been the lingua franca while Matthew was young, "it's like Socrates all over again." The look he directed at House made it clear that the reference was not intended to flatter.

"He's been interrogating me for weeks," Matthew answered in the same language. "He just can't deal with not knowing what's going on."

"Puzzles are meant to be solved." House rolled his eyes, though he was having difficulty following the remarks. If only because the Romance languages he knew had diverged from their Latin base, and he hadn't heard Latin used as a living language before. "And it's rude to talk about a person behind their back in another language."

"You are hardly in a position to comment on anyone else's manners, or lack thereof," Methos said severely. Matthew could have told him that the reprimand was a waste of time. "You came damn close to getting someone killed this evening -- possibly yourself."

House gave him a mock-shudder, his tone sarcastic as he returned the comment with, "Ooo, scary." Not giving any sign that the comment did anything other than amuse him. "You sound like some dried up old nun." He paused. "With bonus profanity."

"Glad I could entertain," Methos said dryly. "Matthew, good to see you again. Now, if there's nothing else, I'll get back to burning dinner."

"There's a decent take-out around the corner," House offered, leaning back in his chair. "Did you actually meet Socrates?"

He wasn't about to let Adam leave, not when he had a chance to poke and pry at another Immortal's secrets other than just Matthew.

The man was infuriating, and given the sheepish look on Salisbury's face, the man wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut for five minutes after Methos left. That said, Salisbury was a good enough judge of character to know when a mortal posed a threat. He wasn't quite as blinded by his own moral code as was MacLeod.

"Yes," he said after a long moment, relaxing back into his chair. "Though dinner is on you if you want any more answers. We just-established GP's tend towards poverty, and I doubt Matthew does any better on his detective's salary." There. That was enough to pay Salisbury back for the discomfort Methos currently found himself in. He met the other man's narrow-eyed glare with Adam Pierson's most innocent smile, and leaned back in his chair again.

House all but rubbed his hands together, reaching for the phone. He didn't have any intention of paying for it directly, since he had successfully managed to have dinner charged to the hospital before. Even if Cuddy did give him more clinic hours to pay for it later.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008/2009. Unedited.


End file.
